


You make flowers grow in my lungs

by Alter_E



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Hanahaki Disease, I was going to do a fluffy christmas fic, In The Worst Way Possible, M/M, Mutual Pining, no beta we die. period., yet here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21945538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alter_E/pseuds/Alter_E
Summary: They kissed once, under the mistletoe as a joke. And Daniel knows it’s a joke, because what else could it be? Kevin had laughed it off right after that and the kiss was never mentioned again.That was nearly a year ago.The first petal came the night after that.
Relationships: Daniel | RTGameCrowd/Kevin O'Reilly
Comments: 14
Kudos: 87





	You make flowers grow in my lungs

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to do a fluffy holiday fic (that is well over 600 words of me trying to fit the whole baby it's cold outside song into a fic where the lyrics are normal conversation. I finished the first verse actually) yet here we are. Over 3k worth of pain, so scroll down and enjoy your gift!
> 
> FYI: Hanahaki Disease is a fictional disease in which the victim coughs up flower petals when they suffer from one-sided love. It ends when the beloved returns their feelings (romantic love only; strong friendship is not enough), or when the victim dies. It can be cured through surgical removal, but when the infection is removed, the victim's romantic feelings for their love also disappear.
> 
> The usual RPF preface: Yep, yep, you're seeing this correctly. I'm writing fanfic for them. No, don't drag this fic kicking and screaming into anyone's face, just leave it be in this corner of the internet. 
> 
> Also! To all of the people who still spam this in RT's chat: Why are you here if you can't read? Like, did you misclick something and get here? Because someone can't read the fucking disclaimer!

They kissed once, under the mistletoe as a joke. And Daniel knows it’s a joke, because what else could it be? Kevin had laughed it off right after that and the kiss was never mentioned again.

That was nearly a year ago.

The first petal came the night after that. It started small, unnoticeable and almost symbolic in a way if he thinks too much about it on sleepless nights. Daniel didn’t think much of it at the time.

The day after, waving Kevin goodbye as his friend leaves the UK to go back to Cork, Daniel coughs into his sleeve. A single cherry blossom petal greets him, and he can’t chalk this up to anything. 

Cherry blossom though, that’s ironic. 

Three days later, he wakes up in a coughing fit and finds three petals innocently laying on his pillow. The vivid dream of them sharing a kiss under the mistletoe still fresh is in his mind as Daniel gathers the petals up in his hand and places them on his nightside table. 

He doesn’t go back to sleep after that, his first sleepless night.

* * *

“You manage to get back safe and sound?”

“Everything’s fine, just unpacking my stuff right now. How’s it going for you?”

“A bit tired, actually.”

“God, same. The con was fun and all, but my god it took a lot out of ya.”

“I know right, not to mention everything after that.”

“You have to say though, the party was really fun.”

“Yeah.”

* * *

The second sleepless night is exactly a month after the kiss, and it’s strange, the taste of blood on his lips. It also hurt a lot more than Daniel first thought, chocking out petals over the sink at 2 AM.

He picks up them up one by one, ignoring how the blood stained his fingers and the stark white sink. There’s no dream this time, he has been ignoring Kevin’s uploading, and it’s only a few stray thoughts here and there that drifted into his mind when he’s daydreaming. 

A few stray thoughts are enough, it seemed. 

He spends the rest of the night reading up on cherry blossom, the night strangely reminiscent to what he did months ago back in Japan. Cherry blossom has always been his favourite, it isn’t like Daniel need a refreshment on what he has already known.

Fleeting lives die like beautiful falling petals. 

He chuckles, and then laughs, and then coughs. Bloody petals mock him from where they lay on his palm, and Daniel carefully puts those into his pile of ever-growing petals. He debates just flushing the pile away, so no one would know and no one would find out.

Daniel stops himself last minute, finding a small unused box and putting the petals inside instead. He keeps it on him at all time, handling it with too much care than necessary.

Well, not really. It is like keeping his heart close to himself, just a bit more literally.

* * *

“Say-”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I’m just wondering actually- Um, you know what, nevermind.”

“Wait, what? Dude, don’t hold out on me like this.”

“Oh, it’s nothing really. Just wondering if you’re up for a collab sometimes later this week. It’s ok if you don’t really, I know you’re pretty damn busy-”

“Dude, hell yes! What game do ya have in mind?”

* * *

Confessing would make this all so easy, is Daniel’s thought when February comes rolling. Confessing would end the pain in his chest, and then other pain in his lungs and then some. 

If Kevin likes him back, that is. 

But there was no mention of the kiss, and Kevin has not been acting any stranger than usual when they talk. It’s a joke, and they don’t talk about it. The agreement goes unsaid, and while Daniel sometimes wishes they talk about it, he couldn’t find the courage to mention it to Kevin. 

He will take the pain and the grief and the heartache, but making their friendship strained and awkward until they inevitably drifted apart? He can’t take that, refuses to in fact. 

They don’t talk about it, but Daniel still thinks about it constantly. It’s hard not to when he coughs up petals on a daily basis; when the small box started to get crowded and full.

It’s also hard not to think about the kiss when it wasn’t just a peck on the cheek. The taste of Kevin’s lips, sweet with an aftertaste of wine still haunts him along with the tangy taste of metal when he licks his lips during odds hour of the night when the diseases act up for the worse.

* * *

“You should tell him, you know.”

“I know.”

“This is killing you, he’s killing you. Literally.”

“It’s not his fault. Really, if anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I’m the one who falls.”

“...You should still do something.”

“He doesn’t need to know.”

“I can’t believe- God, ok. Promise me you will get the surgery if it gets too bad?”

“It won’t get there.”

* * *

He can still stream, and Daniel has never been so grateful for his facecam, or lack thereof. He still coughs every now and then, but that’s easily chalked up to a bug he catches or something along the way.

He feels guilty, lying to his chat like that, but at the same time, he doesn’t owe them anything. Plus, admitting he has Hanahaki would open a whole new can of worm that Daniel’s not ready to deal with.

He isn’t ready for the questions, or worse, the encouragement to go for it. Isn’t ready for the personal confessions someone will send, because of course someone in his audience has been through this, and it will make Daniel feels worse for himself.

He doesn’t know what to do anymore, Daniel realises. Well, he knows that already, but now that he actually admits it to himself, it feels more real this way. More tangible, even if he’s still afraid to say it aloud. 

Sure, right now he’s still keeping up his chin and looks on the bright side. His hands still shake at the thought of telling Kevin the truth but he still got times. He can still- It’s not fatal yet- he has times to makes decisions. 

He still has a chance, is what Daniel’s trying to say here. A chance that the one-sided attraction is not so one-sided, the unrequited love is not so unrequited. 

(He still asks himself if the bigger chance it’s the chance of him losing Kevin. Or is it the other way around? He’s the one with this whole problem after all.)

There’s also a chance that he will take up the surgery. It has a high success rate, it will keep him from dying...it will keep him from falling for Kevin ever again. 

He doesn’t mind coughing up petals. In a weird way, it shows that he actually feels something for Kevin, something real and painful that makes his heart a mess and his physical health going down the drain. But by God, he will endure it all, if it means that he can keep all of these feelings too.

Daniel doesn’t want to think about the surgery.

* * *

“We have a 95% success rate, it’s not to worry. Hanahaki’s very common, and our crew has years of experience dealing with these kinds of thing.”

“...Can you remove it at any stage?”

“We advise not to wait until it gets too dangerous, as removing the flowers won’t reverse the internal damages it caused to your lungs, throat and so on. But yes, it’s possible to do so, but that comes with a declining chance of success of course.”

“Of course. Thank you for your time.”

“We await your call.”

* * *

The first whole flower, five petals with a little stem to go with comes with the summer heat as March knocks on the door. It feels different, the tingling sensation of vomiting these up so strange compared to the smaller petals months before. The stem drags along his throat, and he hacks it out with an abundant amount of blood to paint his pillow red.

For the first time, he can actually feel the flowers growing in his lungs. 

It hurts, and Daniel lays back down, catching his breath through the metallic taste in his mouth. The clock reads 04:12, blinking tauntingly as he just breaths through the sudden pain.

He can actually feel it rustle inside with each breath he takes, sending sharp jolts through his body. His head is spinning and Daniel coughs again, though this time only blood comes out.

His bed must be fucked now, with all of these late-night coughing fits. Daniel sighs, picking himself up and dragging himself to the toilet instead. 

On the way there, another small flower joined the first one, and then a few more small petals that littered the floor. He will gather them up in the morning, Daniel thinks, but for now, he looks at himself in the mirror and pities himself for a bit more.

He looks pale, tired, and done with life. Well, most of him look pale except for the crimson blood on his lips, and he licks those again, tasting the familiar blood. But it’s the sweet perfume of cherry blossoms that makes him want to retch again. 

He does, gagging on the flowers and petals until the sun rises. The light shines through the window, brightening up the room and Daniel has to admit, the bloody flowers look good catching the yellow sunlight. 

He needs a new box.

* * *

“You doing ok there?” 

“Yeah, all’s fine. What’s up?”

“You tell me. Your voice sounds like shit man, no offence.”

“Nice to make a sick guy feel appreciated.”

“You know what I mean, shut up.”

“It’s fine, really. I caught something last weekend, it’s taking a toll on my throat.”

“Hope you’ll feel better soon then, being sick sucks.”

“Cheers. Your audio good there?”

“Let’s start the stream.”

* * *

He doesn’t get a new box. Instead, it’s a large pinboard that he places on top of his bed. He spends a whole evening carefully arrange the old petals and the new flowers up there, his work only getting interrupted by four coughing fits and two flowers. 

Daniel has to say, it was well worth the time. It genuinely looks good, the sad parody of the cherry blossom tree with pink and red mixing through. It’s not yet a full tree, but he thinks he will get there very soon with how much he’s throwing up these days. 

Maybe it’s because he just says screws it to any attempt at distancing himself from Kevin. The streams they did together are still fresh in his mind, Kevin laughing at every dumb joke he made, Kevin antagonising him in the best way possible in games while they share a giggle, Kevin spending time with him.

Sure, they’re streaming and there are over 5k people watching, but sometimes Daniel forgot about his chats and it was just Kevin and him. And that’s just the onstream moments when they tried their best to entertain people in their own way (which just so happened to be wreaking havoc) that already got his heart racing and his throat bleeding.

The chatter before and after, Kevin checking in with him every now and then to make sure he’s doing good with all the coughing throughout the night, how he can hear the smile in Kevin’s voice, it’s all too much. 

He feels worse when the voice call ended, leaving him alone in the quiet room. The only sound filling in the silence is his fits of coughing, and sometimes George’s purr when his cat nuzzles his face. It’s almost a sympathetic noise, accompanied by a little headbutt that makes Daniel thinks that his cat knows he’s dying slowly too.

Well, George’s smart and it doesn’t take much to put his bloody hacks and him dying together to make two. 

He waves George away when he feels another fit is about to hit, and then promptly vomits into the bag he has beside him. It has filled up considerably during the 4 hours stream, nearly overflowing like his own tears and feeling.

The tree is really coming together.

* * *

“You’re crushing on anyone?” 

“That’s a sudden question…”

“Hmmm, just thinking really. Your horrible voice is reminding me of that, that thing. What do you call it?”

“Hanahaki?”

“Yeah, that. A friend of mine also got it, and god that absolutely messed up her throat.”

“Nah, I wish though. It would surely make thing easier to get rid of the voiced then.”

“True. Still, have you seen a doctor about this?”

“Yeah, they’re working on it.”

“Get well soon.”

* * *

May, June and July blurred together and in a blink of an eye, Autumn is here. His tree is now a small forest, and he has to buy another pinboard just to keep it going. His voice’s getting worse, to the point the new chat meme is centred around that, and Daniel doesn’t think it will get better any time soon.

The idea of the surgery is plaguing his mind more and more, as is Kevin’s singing voice. The cover of “Can’t help falling in love with you” is playing on repeat in his head, and really, that good of a singing voice should be fucking illegal.

It is making everything in his lungs worse, that sometimes he struggles to breathe. He’s monthly going in those special hospitals just for this fucking diseases now and seeing the black and white pictures of his lungs...Daniel honestly doesn’t know how to feel, seeing himself dying in like this. He thinks he might pin those photos on the pinboard too, just for the hell of it. 

It’s looking more and more like a scrapbook or a diary. Yes, a bitter diary that he looks at every time he wakes up. A constant reminder of...something. His cowardice perhaps?

Daniel doesn’t have it in himself to put it in another room, or to stop pining up flowers and petals. It’s taking more and more time every evening too, making his little forest and adding in the new leaves and flowers that he throws up in the process. It probably isn’t healthy, doing this, but it’s strangely cathartic for him, pining them up one by one.

It calms him down, just a bit, and he doesn’t cry himself to sleep that much anymore. Just when it suddenly acts up does his bed returned to the bloody, messy and wet state it is. 

It acts up today, and he must be craving for pain when he plays the cover on repeat, clenching his teeth and holding down the petals as the night passes.

* * *

“Hello, how can I help you?”

“Right, hi. I’m looking for, uh, you know...About this whole Hanahaki thing. I’m told to call this if I’m interested in surgery options?”

“Please wait while we direct you to a doctor.”

“Thanks a lot.”

* * *

September’s chill and he watches the leaves fall down the trees outside his house while coughing up actual leaves into the paper bag. His voice is officially ruined, and Daniel hasn’t stream at all this month. 

He says it’s for a personal trip, a holiday and he will be back soon. He feels horrible for lying as if that isn’t what he has been doing these past months, but this time the constant need to stream bugs him in the back of his mind whenever he wakes up, and maybe he should stop going to Twitter that much.

Kevin still drops by his DM every now and then. He still replies, they still chat and Daniel still lets sleeping dogs lie, not touching the topic with a tenfoot pool. 

Not that he actually needs to care for much longer anymore. 

He schedules it for the end of November but the process of slowly removing and fixing other things will start tomorrow. Daniel isn’t sure what that entails, maybe just him coughing up more flowers but this time with professional help? He did kind of zone out a bit when they explained, the voice turned static as his mind replays the decision he just made.

That leaves him with approximately two months before he actually does the deed, and his fingers twitched near the send button sometimes. The messages, one he wrote one sleepless night when it didn’t hurt as much still lay there in the note app, waiting to see the light of the day.

Waiting for someone else to read it beside him.

When October rolls around, he deleted the message once and for all.

When October rolls around, Kevin asks him to come around for another Christmas gettogether, and Daniel bites his tongues agreeing. 

Maybe he really does like suffering too much. Or maybe not, but it’s what he deserves anyway.

* * *

“It will be great seeing you again! I can’t wait, this will be so much fun.”

“Same here, god. A whole year, huh?”

“And we live in the same country. God, I really need to visit you more.”

“I always have too much free time on my hand, so sure. Drop by whenever.”

“You will regret saying that, but sure.”

* * *

He wakes up on the first of December, for once feeling like he can breathe again. He doesn’t remember fresh air to feel this good, and just for the hell of it Daniel takes another breathe, enjoying the cold feeling in his lungs.

His lungs.

His not-infested lungs.

The surgery, of course. That explains why he’s laying on the hospital bed, while there are people around him in white uniform, checking and double-checking his vitals and whatnot.

He went through with it. He actually went through with it, and Daniel’s not sure whether to be happy or sad. Both, really, a weird mix of it that Daniel guesses he can describe as melancholy.

He’s not so sure why he’s feeling that. His lungs are normal again, his voice will return soon with some additional operations so he can get back to the way life was before. Everything’s going well.

It doesn’t hurt when he thinks about Kevin anymore. There’s still the sense of adoration between friend and what’s left of his idolisation is still somewhere in there, buried deep down but the romantic feeling’s gone. 

There’s no flower growing in his lungs. Nothing there in the morning, and no more blood. 

He can finally breathe.

* * *

“Hey! How’s it going?”

“Better, honestly. Your voice isn’t getting any better though.”

“Wow, thanks a lot there.”

“What? I told you to go and see a doctor, or something like that. Not my fault you haven’t done so.”

“Ugh, I will get to it. You’re like my ma, god.”

“Just worried about you, you little shit. Come on, the whiskey’s waiting back at my place. That can help.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“You know it.”

* * *

Kevin’s lips are bloody, and he’s coughing a lot. If he hadn’t gone through eleven months of pain and torture, maybe Daniel won’t even notice.

But he had, and so, he does notice. For a moment, he wonders who’s the lucky one, before shrugging and downing his own shot of whiskey. It doesn’t matter anymore, not to him at least.

The liquor goes down easily, with an extra burn on his still healing throats. It’s nothing Daniel can’t handle, but Kevin’s struggling. He watches as Kevin coughs into his hand, catching a glimpse of green before that got stuffed into the jean’s pocket and away from his eyes.

It’s in a bad stage, maybe just a few months behind from where Daniel was. He will give it about three. He doesn’t say anything though, figuring it will be one of the subjects that they won’t talk about ever.

* * *

“I like you.”

“Me too.”

“No, not in that way. Like _like_ you. You know what I mean.”

“Ah.”

* * *

He hands Kevin a tissue.

Kevin waves it off before he coughs again. In the dimmed light with the fireplace crackling, Daniel thinks he can see what looked like a mistletoe leaf falling down.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holiday, I wish you all the best! The best gift you can give is probably some good old comment, so why not head down there and scream to your heart's content? I don't write much angst stuff, so this was a fun exploration.


End file.
